There is a systemic report generated, no less than monthly, to notify employees of the number of calls recorded.

Employees may request access to a recorded call used for evaluative purposes and may listen to the call on official time.

At an employee's request, the employee and/or employee's representative and the manager will meet within two (2) business days, to listen to and discuss a recorded call together. The employee's representative, however must request and receive permission under IRC 6103 (1)(4)(A) to listen to calls involving return information.

Documented monitoring is a part of the evaluation process. The National Agreement governs such recordings. When completing reviews, ensure they are:

A manager narrates the review using enough detail to support their assessment. Clearly identify to the employee actions taken (or not taken) to accomplish the Critical Job Elements (CJE). The EQRS automatically identify the critical element for each action addressed. Give examples of what employee said and examples of what could have been said.

When conducting a live review, do not interrupt a call unless the employee is:

A Workload Management/Efficiency review will be conducted monthly to evaluate employee performance as it relates to Time Utilization, Timeliness and Workload Management when assigned to working Adjustment Inventory.

The review will be based upon a specific period of time the employee was assigned to work inventory. Typically, this would be a block of time ranging from two to four hours and will include, but is not limited to, the following:

Complete the Workload Management/Efficiency Review template in accordance with the coding guidelines provided in the job aid located on the EQ Website http://eq.web.irs.gov/training.htm. Guidance can also be found in Course 11981.

Workload Management/Efficiency reviews determine if an employee is:

Ensure the integrity and accuracy of adjustments made to taxpayer accounts. Review 100 percent of on-line transactions for each newly trained Customer Service Representative (CSR) until the employee's performance is satisfactory (the employee consistently inputs correct adjustments). Follow up with ongoing sample reviews. Reinstate 100 percent reviews if determined that a performance problem exists.

Managers and/or their lead technical employees can perform non-evaluative monitoring on the following:

The primary purpose of a non-evaluative review is to help the employee develop and enhance their job skills. Effective non-evaluative reviews foster open lines of communication between the employee, the manager, and the lead technical employee. This enables the manager and/or their lead to receive employee feedback and transfer operational goals informally.

Non-evaluative or coaching reviews do not contain a written rating. Share the results orally. Some documentation is appropriate establish it actually occurred. EQRS may be used to track employee development for this purpose. Have the employee initial and date. Provide one copy for the employee and retain the other copy in the employee's drop file.

Non-evaluative or coaching reviews have a significant impact on how our callers are treated, since our employee can take immediate advantage of our experience. The manager or the lead employee should conduct the review; however, occasionally delegating these duties to a skilled journey level employee, for training purposes, may be appropriate.

Conduct a minimum of two non-evaluative targeted reviews per employee per month if customer accuracy errors are identified on use of the Probe & Response Guide. This applies only to employees staffing tax law applications.

If it is determined during the targeted review the employee is not following the Probe and Response Guide, use your discretion whether to listen to the entire call and document as an evaluative review.

Clerical employees perform various administrative duties which support the IRS's ability to provide customer service. They may include the following:

You should focus not only on the employee's ability to complete their assignments, but also on their ability to set priorities and complete assignments independently and expeditiously. You must conduct monthly reviews to determine the accuracy and timeliness of employees' work.

Clerical reviews should also address the clerical work process (i.e. Form 3210 acknowledgement and follow-up)

The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) is an independent organization within IRS whose employees assist taxpayers who are experiencing economic harm, who are seeking help in resolving tax problems that have not been resolved through normal channels, or who believe that an IRS system or procedure is not working as it should. TAS has not clarified its existing criteria to include equitable treatment and taxpayer rights, specifically an area for interest of the taxpayer and Public Policy.

A referral to a TAS office should be made if the IRS employee receives a taxpayer contact, and the employee cannot initiate action to resolve the taxpayer's inquiry or provide the relief requested by the taxpayer. A taxpayer does not have to specifically request TAS assistance to be referred to TAS. Any taxpayer contact that meets any of the criteria listed in the IRM 13.1.7.2, TAS Case Criteria should be forwarded to the local Taxpayer Advocate for special handling using Form 911/e911, Request for Taxpayer Advocate Service Assistance (and Application for Taxpayer Service Assistance Order). The NTA Toll-Free number, 1–877–777–4778 or TTY/TDD 1–800–829–4059 should be provided to the taxpayer and the taxpayer should be advised that TAS is available if the taxpayer is not satisfied with the service they received

All Form 911/e911 (with criteria code 5 through 8) must be approved by Customer Service Representative's (CSR) manager. Managers may delegate this responsibility to another person.

All Form e911 (with criteria code 1 through 4) must be systemically routed to Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS). Upon completion of the review, select one of the following actions:

A referral to a TAS office is not necessary even if TAS case criteria are met if the IRS employee can resolve a taxpayer's inquiry or provide the relief requested, as outlined in IRM 13.1.7.4 Same Day Resolution by Operations. However, if the review is not resolved the same day (within 24 hours), AMS sends the form electronically from the manager's inventory to the TAS inventory.

The following types of cases should not be referred to TAS:

If TAS determines the Form 911/e911 does not meet their criteria, they return a paper copy of the Form 911 (with explanation) to the Erroneous Referral Coordinator who forwards to the originator's manager.

Planning and Analysis (P&A) must:

The review should address:

Compare the above practices to the following:

Prepare a schedule of planned reviews at the beginning of each fiscal year and no later than November 1st. Provide the schedule to the Operation Manager, or Director, as appropriate.

Request the information needed from the manager 30 days in advance, so all information is available at the start of the review. This may include the following items:

It is recommended when reviewing a Team Manager (TM) that you review a minimum of six EPFs; including a work leader, one team clerk/secretary and four CSRs or tax examiners. Also, try to review EPFs of employees with different levels of experience.

It is recommended when reviewing a Department Manager (DM) that you review at least half of all EPFs of those who directly report to the DM, plus samples of employees' EPFs from teams within that department.

Obtain assistance, as needed, on completing technical portions of the review such as the closed case reviews from the Quality or PAS Units. Operations Managers may also obtain assistance from the P&A staff to assist with department reviews.

Allow sufficient time for performing the review, writing the report, and giving feedback from the final report to the manager or director as appropriate.

Promptly document the operation review in a memorandum to the appropriate manager or department head. Include the following in the memorandum:

Maintain a copy of the memorandum in the office files and one in the manager's EPF. Be sure to follow-up timely with the manager on action items. Document all follow-up actions.

The Operational Review should cover the following:

Review personnel management practices of maintaining Employee Personnel Files (EPF), Drop files and Personal/Training files for the following:

Review Workload Management Practices for the following:

Review Administrative, Security, Privacy and Safety Practices, including the following:

Review Manager's organization effectiveness:

The implementation of the Embedded Quality (EQ) process has resulted in changes to the measurement of quality in Accounts Management.

Customer Accuracy, the first of the three Embedded Quality measures being implemented, measures whether a correct response is provided.

Timeliness, the second measure determines whether case actions were taken in a timely manner based on procedural requirements.

Professionalism, the third measure measures the appropriate treatment of callers.

Refer to the Program Letter for your BOD and campus for site-specific goals.

The site’s EQ Improvement Plan (Quality Action Plan) is the road map used by the sites to ensure EQ objectives are met or exceeded. Plans outline key actions in support of fiscal year EQ goals.

Recommended Plan Content:

The Quality Assurance process provides a method to plan, measure, review and revise the quality of work throughout Accounts Management. Components of this process include:

Managerial monitoring reviews are performed for employee performance and to identify barriers to quality.

Managers are encouraged to contact the local Quality Manager for help in creating Ad-hoc reports. The Quality Review centralized site located in Philadelphia provides Site Summary reports at the end of each filing season and fiscal year. These reports can help in showing strengths and weaknesses in their areas and also for help with trends and analysis in helping to meet goals for the APP.

Statistical sampling is the basis of the Quality Review process. Sample plans are designed on the laws of probability using mathematical procedures. The advantage of such techniques is their reliability, objectivity, and consistency. The quality review system uses systematic random sampling to verify the quality and productivity within Accounts Management without reviewing each piece of work.

The quality reviewer reviews work following the sample plan. Results of the reviews are analyzed to identify trends and training needs and to establish accuracy, timeliness and professionalism measures. Reviewers must strictly follow sampling procedures to ensure valid accuracy rates.

The quality reviewer must have an understanding of the following:

Monthly reports are produced from the NQRS system. These reports provide information on Customer Accuracy, Procedural Accuracy and Regulatory Accuracy, Timeliness and Professionalism. Sites may also produce ad-hoc reports for their site. Samples of issued reports are as follows:

Front line managers are responsible for the accuracy of information contained in the e-WFM database. This involves general information contained in the employee database as well as date-specific information contained in the daily work files and the exception database.

Depending on site procedures, managers make changes directly to the database or provide the information to the responsible party. This information is used to gather and utilize historical call volume patterns to predict estimated resources required to answer calls.

e-WFM provides managers with many reports covering virtually all aspects of their call center operations.

Most reports give managers flexibility in specifying what information to include and how they want it to appear.

Managers can utilize reports to identify trends, review agent statistics and to ensure the accuracy of the e-WFM scheduling data.

Some recommended reports are:

The Agent Productivity contains two reports: the Agent Activity Report which shows call statistics for calls handled; and, the Agent Availability Report which shows adherence to schedule. Both reports are available the next business day and are printed daily to see calls handled statistics and to check employee adherence to schedule for prior day.

The Agent Check-in Report can be printed daily or weekly to show employees schedule for day/week.

The Agent Schedule Report shows daily staffing by 1/2 hours for each application for day and extended hours.

The Ready Report is generated within Microsoft Access from data with e-WFM and Aspect.

The Weekly Schedule Report shows an employee's schedule for the entire week, including scheduled times off the telephone.

Sites follow the new e-WFM/RTA and Information Technology (IT) Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and ensure procedures are in place for required data backups. They are available at http://joc.enterprise.irs.gov/wfms.

Aspect Reports gives a manager call activity statistics on a particular assistor/agent. Some reports are:

The Aspect Agent Activity Report summarizes data for all agents over a specified period of time. Managers can see:

Use this report to analyze past and current performance indicators.

Use a weekly report for a good indicator to identify trends.

The Agent Detail Report gives the following information:

The Work Planning and Control System (WP&C), part of the Integrated Management Planning Information System (IMPIS), is described in IRM 25.14.1 Production Control and Performance Reporting. A basic feature of the IMPIS system is to set out methods and management tools used for planning, scheduling, controlling, and measuring workloads and resources.

The WP&C system produces a series of four (4) weekly reports. Two of these, the Managers Report and the Program Analysis Report use a combination of schedule and actual production and time reporting data to monitor receipts, productions, inventory production rates and staff hour usage.

The other two reports, the Abstract Report and the Employee Detail Summary Report, provide fiscal type data by organization.

A basic feature of the Total Management Information System is the numeric code structure used to identify the Organization where work is performed or hours expended, the Function (work action) performed and the Program(s) to facilitate a pyramid concept of summarizing information.

The input source of WP&C data is the Form 3081 completed by each employee and manager. See IRM 1.4.16.2.4.2, Managers must ensure the accuracy of the data their employees report on Form 3081, ensuring consistency with other reports, such as the Aspect Agent Utilization Report.

Detailed information on the Organization, Function and Program (OFP) list structure can be found in IRM 25.8.1 OFP Codes Overview. The IRM contains a list of all currently approved OFP Codes. It also contains specific steps necessary to change and/or modify existing codes and to request new codes.

The Workload Information Tracking System (WITS) is an on-line direct data entry system. WITS provides the users with timely reports and the ability to generate reports by selection of subsets. It governs two data types: Referral Inventory (INV) and Field Assistance (FA).

WITS output includes weekly and cumulative reports for the user which reflects a summary of each Accounts Management site.

Sites control their referral inventory on IDRS, and monitor by using the CCA 4242 Inventory Report Listing. This report is accessed through Electronic Online-Output Network System (EONS).

Referral inventory is input each week on a timely basis. Ensure appropriate staffing is available to accomplish timely input.

The Electronic Online-Output Network System (EONS) allows managers to view electronic versions of numerous archived reports using a personal computer. The Website is http://eons.web.irs.gov.

EONS allows managers to perform customized queries of WP&C data versus using standard WP&C reports.

IDRS produces varied reports for purposes of audit trail information, duplicate controls, overage cases, etc. Managers need to be aware of each report and take necessary action when received.

Generated weekly, the IDRS Overage Case report contains all cases controlled to an IDRS employee number and can be used to:

Each campus has the capability of generating an aged list by a specific category. For example, an analyst may want to have a report that lists all cases of 180 days old or a report that lists all taxpayer inquiries assigned to a specific unit/group/team.

The IDRS Inventory Control report summarizes inventory, receipts, and closures by category and may be used to validate WP&C counts of controlled case closures. It gives a broad picture of the controlled inventory and may assist in identifying training needs or planning resources.

The IDRS Unit Summary report summarizes the age category of all assigned cases and the overage percent for both the employee and unit.

The IDRS multiple Case Control Report (by IDRS employee number) identifies multiple employees assigned the same account.

The Enterprise Telephone Data (ETD) Warehouse is a web based data warehouse available on the Intranet at http://joc.enterprise.irs.gov/etd/. It is the official source for all data related to Toll-Free measures and indicators.

ETD allows managers to pull data and create reports, charts or export to Excel.

Use ETD to query for current and historical data regarding: